


one night will remind you

by Kanoodle



Series: our separate ways [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 07:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanoodle/pseuds/Kanoodle
Summary: Something writhes and snaps in her chest – irritation, anger, panic, she isn’t sure what.  Today has beenawful, with Rocket stealing those damn batteries and the Sovereign nearly shooting them out of the sky, butthis?This, on top of it all?  This arrogant, condescending old man, who bragged about his accomplishments and victories as if they were hardly worth the breath to tell the tale, trying to take Peter from them and their stupid little family?The thought strikes her like a slap across the face, and she’s grateful that Peter’s back is to her.  He doesn’t see the way her expression twists with hurt before she can compose herself.AKA, the role swap AU that literally no one asked for or wanted, but here's another installment anyway.





	one night will remind you

“What a load of bullshit,” Gamora hisses, stomping over dried twigs and dead leaves. They snap and crunch satisfyingly under her boots, but frustration still simmers low in her gut. “Can you believe the nerve of him? Trying to traipse back into your life, trying to be your _father?_ I don’t trust it for a second.”

Peter lets out a noncommittal sound as he follows behind her, and Gamora whirls around to face him, hands braced against her hips. She waits as he ducks beneath a low hanging branch, his movements graceful and almost entirely silent.

“This has all the hallmarks of a trap, you know.” She gestures sharply to the distant glow of their campfire, the warm light a beacon in the dark forest. There, the rest of the team sits with that strange, silent girl and that bizarre man, with his easy smiles and infuriating swagger – different from Peter as night from day.

If the man calling himself Ego hadn’t known so much about Terra, if he hadn’t dropped the name, “Meredith Quill,” like a live grenade, none of the Guardians would have ever believed he and Peter could possibly be related.

(“I hired a Ravager to collect you from Earth,” Ego had told them as they gathered around the fire. Gamora had bristled, recognition rankling at the back of her mind. Ego hardly noticed, focused as he was on Peter, who stared wordlessly into the fire. “I barely remember his name now, but whoever it was, Thanos beat him there. I never imagined you could have survived.”

Peter had only hummed in response.)

Gamora finds Ego familiar and slimy in a way that makes her skin crawl; he seems so much like the type of person she would run into at clubs and bars, smarmy charm and barbed praise. A “pick-up artist,” as Peter once put it. She wishes her ship hadn’t been wrecked so they could coat the bastard in their cosmic dust. Here and now, she says, “The Ravagers, the Kree Purists, and now, the Sovereign. Hell, any one of our old enemies. How can we know he’s not working with them?”

Peter breathes out a sigh, glancing off toward their camp. He looks strangely small, for once, slightly hunched in his favorite dark red coat. (In two months’ time as a Guardian of the Galaxy, the coat had been the first of Peter’s few indulgent purchase – and even then, it had taken Gamora nearly an hour to convince Peter that the universe wouldn’t end if he allowed himself to buy one frivolous thing.)

He murmurs, “I know, but...”

And Gamora freezes.

She creeps forward, ducking down to catch his eye. The moonlight falling through the canopy catches on the silver lines cutting across his brow and the bridge of his nose. Beneath those scars, she sees uncertainty and reluctance on his face, but she spots something else in the dark, too; something too complicated to name.

“You can’t be serious,” she says dully. When he stays silent, Gamora lets out a slightly affronted noise, rocking back. “You _want_ to go with him?”

He pulls a hand down his face, turning to wander a few steps away as he thinks. Gamora scoffs in disbelief, crossing her arms as she waits. In the quiet, the whisper of a breeze rustles the leaves and branches around them, and the noise is near thunderous. The distant cooing of some woodland creature almost makes her jump out of her skin. She thinks she hears the echo of Drax’s booming laughter, but it tapers off before she can be sure.

Something writhes and snaps in her chest – irritation, anger, panic, she isn’t sure what. Today has been _awful_ , with Rocket stealing those damn batteries and the Sovereign nearly shooting them out of the sky, but _this?_ This, on top of it all? This arrogant, condescending old man, who bragged about his accomplishments and victories as if they were hardly worth the breath to tell the tale, trying to take Peter from them and their stupid little family?

The thought strikes her like a slap across the face, and she’s grateful that Peter’s back is to her. He doesn’t see the way her expression twists with hurt before she can compose herself.

The Ravagers had never been family for Gamora – not in the way the Guardians have been. They had provided her shelter after the destruction of her world, had taken her in when no one else would, but they were a far cry from what she had enjoyed as a child. The Ravagers had trained her, had honed her skills, had taught her how to lie and steal and negotiate, occasionally utilizing the business end of a blaster, but they were never close. They were brutal and reckless, if effective, but Gamora had always maintained a morality that the Ravagers could never destroy.

Gamora had always wanted to do the right thing. The Ravagers, on the other hand, did not.

(She thinks briefly of Nebula, a fellow Ravager in Aleta’s faction, only a year or two her junior, and her stomach twists with guilt. They were close as children, but after a few years, Gamora outshone her, started earning the higher-paying jobs and more of Aleta’s favor.

It almost feels silly to wonder what Nebula must think of her, now that Gamora has left her behind.)

Peter turns to face her, eyebrows knitting together, jaw set. “Do you remember the stories I told you? About that famous actor from Earth on the show with the talking car.”

Gamora frowns, taking a second to remember which actor he means. Peter has mentioned the few he could recall, and the foreign names blurred together in her mind. They sat together often in the belly of her M-ship, whenever the others were asleep or ashore, passing a bottle of liquor between them. He would patiently sit with her as she needled him for stories of his home world.

Peter had been older than Gamora had been when Thanos slaughtered their people, and Peter remembered far more of his home than Gamora did of hers. She found something cathartic in Peter’s stories and retellings – a reminder that Thanos didn’t take everything from both of them – and she guarded his childhood memories with the same ferocity she used to guard her own. On those nights alone, she would wait him out until he would sigh and ask, “What do you want to know?”

She would grin with triumph, settling in and leaning forward with an overblown eagerness that sometimes made Peter reluctantly smile. She would ask about the famous figures on Terra – the women he found attractive as a child, like the woman named Milano, or the men he admired for their bravery and skill, like the one called Kevin Bacon.

And sometimes, should would ask him to sing for her, whatever he could remember, which often resulted in little snippets of songs, or half-remembered choruses and tunes. He would make her swear never to tell the others if she valued keeping all of her limbs, and sometimes, if he were feeling generous, he would take requests.

“Sing me the one about the woman and the sailor,” was Gamora’s most frequent demand. It was clearly his favorite and the one he remembered best.

Given this context, though, she thinks she has an idea, and slowly, she asks, “Zardu Hasselfrau?”

Peter takes a breath to speak, but then he stops and blinks at her. Then, his face pinches in a way that Gamora would never tell him is _endearing._ “Wait. Who?”

“Zardu Hasselfrau?” she repeats impatiently. “The one who fought crime?”

It takes a few seconds, but at last, Peter’s eyebrows rise in recognition. “David Hasselhoff,” he corrects.

Gamora nods slowly, accepting the correction but not entirely understanding the point of this digression. She frowns, and her lips part to ask, _Why did the car talk again?_ but Peter raises a hand to interrupt her, offering an apologetic look alongside it.

“What I’m trying to say is...” Peter’s brow furrows after he trails off, and Gamora can see the way he carefully selects his words. Patience has never been her strong suit, but she dredges it up well enough where Peter’s involved. “What I didn’t tell you was— when I was young, I... used to pretend David Hasselhoff was my father.”

Gamora blinks, this time, arms dropping to her side. Then, with a slightly disbelieving laugh, she asks, “You what?”

“I pretended David Hasselhoff was my father,” Peter repeats, far more sheepishly. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, head bowed, and even in the dim light, Gamora thinks she sees the faint hint of a color rising in his cheeks. He takes a moment to collect himself before he continues, “Whenever there were school outings or father-son events, I always felt... ashamed. My mother would try to involve herself where she could, but I was young and foolish and felt—different. Secluded. I never wanted to seem odd, so I would try to convince the other children that my father was out of town, filming or touring with his band.”

The thought of it is charming, Gamora has to admit, and a small, unbidden smile curls her lips. These days, Peter rarely lies, from what she’s seen. She’s watched him adopt roles for the sake of a job – she witnessed it firsthand on Xandar, in fact, as he charmed her into dropping her guard outside of the Broker’s shop – but aside from that, he was always honest with her. Guarded, of course, but candid and sincere when he allowed himself to be.

“Did they ever believe you?”

It’s not often that Peter laughs, but he does so now – quiet and barely there. Gamora relaxes slightly with it.

“No,” he says, his expression softening, turning slightly sad and pensive, “never, but it didn’t stop me from trying. My teacher would send me home with notes for my mother. ‘I’m concerned about Peter’s frequent fibbing. Please discuss with him the consequences of persistent lying.’ I even had this little magazine clipping of him, too. I would keep it in my backpack and show it off like it was some department store portrait, and sometimes, I would— I would imagine what it would be like, if he _were_ my father.”

He laughs again, rueful this time, and he draws a hand down his face. Gamora can only watch for a few long moments, speechless, before he finally lifts his head to catch her gaze. “It’s pitiful, I know, but I just... For the longest time, I... I _wanted_ that, Gamora. Someone to play catch with. Someone to go fishing with. Someone who would teach me how to tie a necktie or how to use a hammer or how to fix a leaking sink. I wanted... I just wanted a dad.”

Gamora can’t remember the last time he’s spoken like this, aside from when she was half-drunk at a bar or on the ship. Sometimes, in those moments, he would sigh with far too much patience and tell her stories about his mother. Sometimes, he would recite the plot of a half-remembered film he had seen. Sometimes, he would hum her parts of songs, voice hesitant and careful, imperfect and _lovely_. And sometimes, he would offer little snippets like these, vulnerable and soft, when he thought she was too far gone to remember.

And she thinks of her own father, what little she can remember of him, who had loved her with his entire being. He was so proud of her, in all things she did, like the clumsy way she would wield a practice sword or mimic his forms and exercises. He would marvel over how quickly she was growing, would tell her how much he was looking forward to seeing the beautiful young woman and formidable warrior she would soon become.

She would give anything to have that again.

She takes a deep breath and releases it between her lips. She tries to dredge up a sense of calm, even if something bristles and snaps in her, reminds her that trust must be _earned_ , not freely given. “And you think this man might be him? Your Hasselhoff?”

The corner of his mouth twitches upward, and he shrugs with one shoulder. “I won’t know until I give it a shot, right?”

She sees again that odd, complicated emotion flit across his face, only this time, she recognizes it for what it is. _Hope_ flickers in his eyes, something brittle and faint but _there_ , nonetheless. It looks so foreign on Peter’s face, when usually he’s so grim, so impassive, and worry starts to percolate in Gamora’s gut.

“Peter...”

Before she can finish her warning, Peter closes the distance so quickly and silently that she hardly realizes he’s moved. He reaches across what little space remains between them, grasping her hand with both of his. “I’m not saying we go into this blind,” he says. Gamora hears a wistful note in his voice, tentative and hesitant, and her stomach twists with it. “I don’t trust this man any more than you do. I’m just saying, I would like to... try. Just for a few days.”

Gamora still hates the idea, and hates even more the idea of Peter setting himself up for what’s sure to be disappointment. She’s dealt with Ego’s type before – cocksure and self-aggrandizing and selfish – but she grudgingly admits that even she could see something sincere in his gaze, some quiet note of affection and awe whenever he set his eyes on Peter.

Apparently, Gamora is silent for too long, because Peter starts to pull away. “I can go alone. You all can stay and repair the ship while I—”

“Absolutely not,” Gamora says, and her voice is far more severe than she intends. Both of her hands wrap securely around his to keep him in place. “If you’re going, we’re going.” She pauses thoughtfully, and amends, “Actually, Rocket should stay and fix the ship, seeing as how it’s entirely his fault it’s broken.”

Peter exhales sharply with familiar exasperation, though his annoyance is belied when another rare smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, earnest and grateful. And as it does every time she witnesses one of those smiles, Gamora’s chest tightens, the breath rushing out of her lungs. She _likes_ that smile, she’s come to realize over the weeks the team has been together; it’s become a personal mission to coax more of them from him, and she knows it’s not her imagination that he _allows_ himself to smile more, these days.

At last, she feels herself relenting, shoulders dropping a little as she lets out another breath. His hands are warm against hers, solid and calloused. “And if it doesn’t work? If it turns out he’s trying to trick us?”

Peter shrugs again. “We’ll kill him.”

Like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

Gamora presses her lips together, swallowing down a laugh, and she slowly glances down at their joined hands. Apparently, Peter only seems to realize what he’s done once she draws attention to it. This time, Gamora is more comfortable about letting him slowly pull back, even if he does so self-consciously, and he crosses his arms over his chest.

“Fine,” Gamora says after a few breaths, and she rubs at her brow, pretending not to notice the way his expression brightens with relief. “Fine, but I want it on record that I don’t like this.”


End file.
